The Second Amendment says a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state and the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, said Ed Whitcraft, a member of the Royal Gorge Tea Party's during Saturday's rally.

Several hundred people gathered in Veterans Park during the Royal Gorge Tea Party's 'Celebrate the 2nd Amendment' rally.

"We are here to celebrate our Second Amendment, to let the elected officials know that we will resist any and all measures taken by them that might in any way infringe on our ability to keep and bear arms," he said. "George Washington stated and I quote, 'firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth keystone.' Our Second Amendment is the glue that ensures the remaining Constitution remains viable. Friends, today while we are assembled here, there are evil forces known as politicians and special interest groups that are hard at work, trying to completely remove our Second Amendment or at least water it down."

During the rally, Col. Mike Hess said President Barack Obama, Gov. John Hickenlooper and other politicians do not understand what the Second Amendment is about.

"What they really want is to take our guns away," Hess said.Tea Party Member Richard Hollenbaugh agreed that Americans are slowly losing their freedoms.

"God gave me this rifle," he said. "Politicians didn't. And they didn't give you the same right either.

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God gave us this right."

America started with people looking for a better life, he said.

"They had a lot of examples to follow throughout history," Hollenbaugh said. "They went back to the Romans, the early Greeks, the British and the French and took the best, then they tweaked it and tweaked it to come up with the Constitution, but they still weren't through. They had to give us the Bill of Rights to tell the government what those limitations were -- not their ability to give us limitations. It's just the opposite. It's gone way too far the other way. Unfortunately, as a society, we've been too permissive. We've been too busy living our lives together with our families and our careers, and we've let them put us into this position. We've allowed it up until now. It stops now."

Although Hollenbaugh asks himself why these things are happening, he said it doesn't matter.

"They don't care about truth," he said. "They don't care about facts. They just have their own leftist, Communist, liberal (agenda) to destroy America.

"Believe it or not, there are thousands of people living in America that do not like America because we are so great. We gave our people the freedom to be great, our economies and our lives. We don't need and we don't want a government telling us what to do."

House District 60 Rep. Jim Wilson said Americans will stand up for their Second Amendment rights.

"We've got to get everybody united," Wilson said. "We're tired of what's going on in this state."

Prior to the gun law bills being placed in the legislation, Vice President Joe Biden called the Democrats to influence their votes on these bills, Wilson said. He promised them if they voted their way, than Obama would come here to get them re-elected.

"Colorado is going to be used as a flagship for the Obama Administration," Wilson said. "What better thing would there be than to have a state filled with hard core hunters to believe in gun control. If you see the headlines, you would believe Colorado believes in gun control."

At one point, re-enactor Woodland resident Keith McKim spoke about how the words to the "Star Spangled Banner" were written

During the War 1812, Francis Scott Key was a lawyer in Baltimore, Md., who negotiated with the British for the exchange of prisoners. When he arrived on board ship, he found the prisoners in a horrible situation. He was told that either the colonists removed the flag at Fort McHenry or the British ships would fire on the fort. When Key protested the fort was filled with women and children, the admiral said if they took the flag down, then they would not fire on the fort.

"(In the words of) George Washington, 'the thing that distinguishes the American patriots from all the peoples of the world are the Americans would die on their feet before they would live on their knees," McKim said.